Thursday's Child
by Aycelcus
Summary: Arthur Dent is having a dream. Too bad it is only sort of about tea. ZaphodArthur. This is slash, folks. Grab a steaming cup of tea and enjoy!


**_Thursday's Child_**

(This title was stolen shamelessly from a David Bowie song, who stole it shamelessly from a creepy old children's rhyme in which a child's personality was dependant upon which day of the week it was born. Based upon this loose evidence, I have come to the conclusion that Arthur Dent must have been born on a Thursday.)

**Author:** Aycelcus

**Rating**: eventual R

**Warnings**: slash and tea

_**Chapter One**_

There was a cat sitting on Arthur Dent's lap.

While normally this happenstance might not be so very odd, Arthur had not been experiencing normality for quite some time (all evidence to the contrary aside.) In actuality, the Improbability Drive was not currently in use, and normality was quite firmly established aboard the starship Heart of Gold. You couldn't have convinced Arthur Dent of this, but that certainly wasn't the fault of either the Improbability Drive or the Heart of Gold, and if asked, both would say they felt quite put-upon by the Earthman's stubborn resistance to all fact and Universal understanding.

So, despite the fact that everything was normal at the moment, Arthur had a cat in his lap. He had been drowsing on the sofa on the bridge for a long moment, wishing for tea and ignoring everything else. One moment there was nothing, and then the next there was a cat, curled up rather fetchingly on his ratty dressing robe. It looked up at him, blinked sleepily, and then quite clearly spoke. "Come on," it said, slight irritation flavoring its voice. "We haven't got all day." Then it jumped down from his lap, and promptly walked through the nearest wall.

Arthur stared at the wall, wondering if it was going to suddenly turn green again. The last time it did that, the Improbability Drive had burped for a moment, and Marvin had grown two heads. They had whinged in chorus for a few minutes, managing to depress each other so thoroughly that the robot had actually started to sink into the floor. The floor was at that moment far more depressed than either of Marvin's heads could ever be and had decided that continuing to be solid so that it could be walked upon was such a dreary existence that the only remaining option was to simply sag into nothingness. Marvin's extra head had disappeared within a minute as normality was restored, but it had taken Eddie almost an hour to talk the floor back to being solid again.

The cat's head popped back through the bulkhead as Arthur was just convincing himself that it was green again, even though it still looked rather beige. "Come on!" It said again.

"Come where?" Arthur asked, quite politely he thought. "I'm not too skilled at walking through walls, especially when I haven't had any tea."

"Well, that's a silly thing to say," said the cat impatiently. "Tea hasn't anything to do with walking through walls, or else you'd see teacups wandering about through walls all over the place. Now hurry up, it's not as if you are my only client of the day, and it's rather rude of you to make all those others wait simply because you can't be bothered to walk through a wall."

"I must be dreaming," Arthur said confusedly as he stumbled towards the wall.

"Of course you are," said the cat. "Why else would I be here? It's certainly not your charming personality."

Arthur decided he really didn't like cats.

Walking through a wall, even in a dream, isn't quite as simple as one might think. Oh, ghosts make it look so easy, but one must remember that ghosts aren't substantial, and Arthur was. Or at least he knew he must be, and in a dream what you think tends to be more real than what really is. So Arthur first put his hand out in trepidation, where it squelched against what should have been a solid wall, but in fact seemed to be made of some slightly tepid gelatin. He pulled his hand back in disgust, whereupon the cat made an exasperated noise.

"What, you expected it to feel good? It's a wall, and most walls don't like you blundering through them any more than you like doing the blundering. However, this is the way we must go. So come on already!"

"Why must we go this way?" Arthur asked, looking between his hand and the wall and wishing for a cup of tea and a very hot shower.

"As if I know," muttered the cat. "It's your sodding subconscious."

"Oh," said Arthur. "Right." And so he closed his eyes, and waded through the wall until he no longer felt the cloying gumminess. He felt the cat run past his leg, and opened his eyes in time to watch the cat disappear again.

"Hey, wait!" Arthur stumbled a bit. His surroundings were not gelatinous, which was their only positive point. It seemed as if the ground couldn't decide whether it wanted to be grass or desert, and looked more like waving grass made from green-beige sand. It grabbed at his ankles and shifted under his feet. Beyond the grassy-sandy knoll he stood upon, the entire universe floated lazily by on a small river that made a slow circuit about him. The universe seemed to be made out of those little umbrellas that come with tropical drinks. Then it seemed to be made of patio furniture. Arthur looked away as it turned into an infinite number of monkeys.

"Hey, cat? Cat!" Arthur called. He was rather worried at this point, having no clue how to get back to his couch when the universe was busy turning itself into fake plastic ice cubes.

"Oh, don't bother looking for him. He's already gone on to his next client, I suspect. He's been rather busy these days, and he really does hate when he has to walk through walls. Says it makes his fur manky for days."

"What?" Arthur was dumbfounded. He turned around, but could see nothing other than the universe, which was currently floating by on a giant rubber duck.

"Oh, hello. I'm your local disembodied voice. You can call me Gus." Gus sounded pleased with itself. "It's my job to take over when you make it to the subconscious."

"Oh, right."

Arthur's dreams were usually far more pedestrian, and he couldn't understand what the point of dreaming about cats and gelatinous walls and universes made out of what might have been towels and might have been fur could possibly be.

"Did you know," Gus said conversationally, "that in here it always Thursday?"

"It is?" asked Arthur. He looked around at his subconscious, watching the universe explode into confetti. "I suppose that rather explains a lot."

"Mmmm. I suspect that it does. Shame that is, how you conscious creatures treat your subconscious. Everything you can't deal with, you toss down here all willy-nilly, like it's your own private rubbish bin. I'm surprised that I can even cope in here."

"I am sorry…" Arthur shrugged. "I don't have any control over that. Dreams are dreams, aren't they? And considering what I've been going through, I would say that I am coping rather well."

Gus snorted. "I didn't say that you couldn't cope, although with everything you've thrown down here I don't think you could cope with a blade of grass, much less the wider universe. I said I couldn't cope. So I think it is high time to toss some of this rubbish back your way." He clears his non-existent throat. "The subconscious," he lectured, "is the catch-all for the human psyche. Not only do you toss all your difficult and desperate moments here, you also pitch in all your deepest desires, the ones you can't bear to face due to repression. And Arthur, you are the King of Repression."

"I am not." Arthur felt compelled to reply. "I am English."

"Exactly. Now, what do you think is your deepest desire? Because it is floating by you on your River of Dreams."

Arthur knew he shouldn't have looked. After all, it was always Thursday in here. But it was like trying to not look at an accident. Once you actually glanced over, you were helpless to look away.

Sitting on the floating rubber ducky universe was a very naked Zaphod Beeblebrox.

Arthur decided his only course of action was to scream in horror and hide behind his hands.

"That is not my deepest desire! That must be my greatest nightmare!"

"Oh? So what IS your deepest desire!"

"A cup of tea!" Arthur blurted out in desperation.

"Then look again at your deepest desire." The glee in Gus' voice was apparent.

Arthur peeked through his fingers.

Zaphod was still naked, but now he seemed to be floating past in a steaming cup of hot tea. He was scrubbing his back lazily, and one of his heads winked jauntily as they floated past.

"There." Gus said, almost feverish in his delight. "Zaphod Beeblebrox is your cup of tea!"

Arthur screamed himself awake.

_**A.N. **: Stay tuned for Arthur's conscious adventures._


End file.
